From Attack! tabloid, No. 29, 1974:
The Important Things
by Dr. William L. Pierce
CHINA HAS THE largest population, the United States has the highest standard of living, the Soviet Union has the biggest navy, Sweden has the most beautiful women, Iceland has the highest level of literacy, and Germany has an industry with the best reputation for efficiency and craftsmanship.
Which of these things are really important? Which make worthy national goals? Toward which ends should a people most intently direct its energies and aspirations?
As America’s bicentennial draws near, one hears a great deal about such questions. All the mass media are putting forth their speculations on the question of what America’s “national purpose” should be, but satisfactory answers are much scarcer.
More Fiberglass Speedboats
If there is any consensus at all it seems to be that Americans should strive, first and foremost, for more of what they already have the most of, namely, affluence.
Although some spokesmen try to tone down the crass materialism of such a goal with euphemisms about improving the “quality of life,” their message still comes across as more fiberglass speedboats parked in American driveways.
In addition, of course, we should look forward to a 30·hour work week and several clever new ways for economically disposing of the country’s growing flood of waste products.
This is the sort of consensus we should expect from what America has, unfortunately, become. It is the sort of national purpose to which an inherently decadent society is naturally attracted.
Materialist Criteria
The criteria one uses in judging national goals depend upon one’s personal world view. The American conservative and the American neo–liberal, despite their differences, both have a fundamentally materialist-economic outlook. They both tend to evaluate national goals in terms of dollars and cents: in terms of such things as the gross national product, the per capita income, the national debt, and the balance of payments.
Even when they translate these economic concepts into human terms, they both have the basic materialist goal of achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of citizens. They only disagree as to the means to be used in achieving this goal.
But there are other criteria, lying wholly outside the materialist-economic realm, which may be used in deciding national goals, in distinguishing between truly important things and secondary things.
The Destiny Thinker
To the racially conscious man or woman of the West—to the destiny-thinker—what counts is not so much whether his fellow citizens are happy, prosperous, and have fulfilled sex lives, but whether they are willing and able to accept the challenge of History. His concern is that his people, his nation, be morally and spiritually prepared, as well as physically able, to grasp its destiny, to fill the role allotted it by the Creator of the universe.
He wants his people to be strong and fit and far-sighted, and he considers these things more important than prosperity and comfort. He understands that a people which places the highest value on happiness, rather than on fitness, is doomed to lose its happiness—and everything else—in the long run.
America Must Survive
He realizes that Western man—and, in particular, White America—has a mission and that that mission must take precedence over all else.
A people with a mission must, first of all, survive. If America is to survive she must have military might, which in turn requires a healthy economy and a vigorous, efficient national industry to provide the material basis for that might.
Liberals and conservatives agree with the destiny-thinker on the desirability of a strong economic and industrial base for America’s national defense, but they put theemphasis in the wrong place. They think primarily in terms of security rather than strength. There is a difference.
Dollar Diplomacy
If a nation seeks always to be strong, it will also be secure. But if it looks only for security, by any means, it may end up neither as strong nor as secure as it should be.
An example of this is our government’s post-World War II program to buy security by putting on the American dole all those countries which might otherwise adhere to our national enemies. The proponents of this program calculate that the billions of dollars in foreign aid used to buy the “friendship” of various banana republics and swarthy principalities allow us to reduce our defense expenditures by even more billions, thus resulting in a net saving for our national economy.
They forget that the only basis for true friendship is mutual respect, and a handout buys that neither for the giver nor the receiver. A truly strong nation will have the respect of other nations without even having to ask for it, whereas a nation which is merely rich will elicit envy rather than respect.
Prosperity vs. Fitness
But national strength depends on more than a material base; it also requires character, and that is something which is in no way enhanced by national prosperity.
Although a nation’s prosperity receives its initial impetus from a strong national character, in the long run prosperity may sap that very moral basis upon which it rests.
Adversity tempers a nation’s soul, just as it does the soul of the individual citizen, whereas the prolonged absence of adversity may allow souls to lose their temper. There is abundant evidence before us that America’s material wealth has taken a heavy spiritual toll.
History’s Irony
History’s great irony is this: fitness preconditions a people’s rise to dominance, which in turn leads to the decay of fitness and an eventual fall from dominance.
When tribes or nations or races interact with one another, that one most endowed by Nature with fitness will, in the ordinary course of events, rise to dominance over the others.
The hardest work and the most rigorous conditions of existence will then be the lot of the subordinate peoples, while the masters will enjoy relative luxury and a relaxed life-style.
The consequence of this difference in the demands which life makes on the various peoples will be that the dominant people will gradually lose its fitness, while the subordinate peoples will tend to retain theirs.
Eventually the time may come when one of the subordinate peoples will be more fit than its masters and will then supplant them and assume the dominant position for itself.
And the cycle repeats itself.
Turbulent Record
This is the principal cause of history’s turbulence. Were it not for this built-in instability, the historical record of mankind would be much simpler than it is. A naturally superior people would gain dominance over other peoples and, as time passed, extend and consolidate that dominance instead of losing it.
We said the cycle repeats itself. That, of course is not exactly true. Because history is turbulent, and not truly periodic or cyclic, there is no repetition. Peoples and nations rise and they fall, but the same peoples and nations never rise again.
When, occasionally, a fallen nation appears to regain its former dominance, one may be certain that the human content of that nation is not what it was before. History not only has a built-in instability but also a built–in loss mechanism: racial change.
Nature’s Pruning
Adversity conditions genetic fitness as well as spiritual fitness. Nature and a fit spirit then collaborate to keep the racial basis of a nation pure and healthy.
Rising prosperity and increasingly easier living begin circumventing Nature’s geneticpruning, with the slow, the stupid, and the lazy no longer being so effectivelyweeded out. Then, as moral fitness declines and toughness turns to squeamishness, man‘s own measures for protecting his racial quality and purity are gradually abandoned, and racial mixture begins taking place.
A nation which begins losing its political grip usually also begins losing its racial quality, which, once gone, can never return.
Ancestral Folly
As our Aryan ancestors began spreading over the face of the earth thousands of years ago, they dominated all the other peoples with whom they came in contact.But eventually they softened and lost their moral fitness, and now over vast areas where they once ruled—from the Mediterranean basin to India— they have so thoroughly mingled their blood with that of other races that they can never rise again, because they have literally ceased to exist.
In America today, the White majority has not only lost its fitness to rule as the unquestioned master of the continent, but it is well on the way toward losing its fitness to survive at all. Only its greater numbers give it security now, and even that security is rapidly dwindling in the face of racial mixing and soaring minority birth and immigration rates.
Vikings and Cannibals
If we could reach back a dozen centuries end pluck 1,000 Vikings out of barbarian Europe and 1,000 Negro tribesmen out of darkest Africa, each group armed with its traditional weapons, and set them at each other, there would not be the slightest doubt as to the outcome of the battle—or, more accurately, massacre. In fact, we could with perfect safety put our money on the Vikings if there were only 100 of them facing the 1,000 Negroes.
But things have changed in the last 1200 years—for the White man. He has grown dangerously soft, while the Blacks have retained much of their primitive toughness.
Nation of Weaklings
The consequences are evident everywhere, as the Black minority intimidates the White majority on our city streets, in our schools, in our jails, in our armed forces, and in our places of work.
And it is not just that we have become physically weak and soft, although that is a part of it. Much more important is that we have lost our moral temper, our courage, our fighting spirit, our sense of personal honor—and our feeling of racial pride and solidarity.
Thus, we even cower before the Jews, who have never been much of a physical menace. And in our dealings with enemies abroad we have become virtually a nation of weaklings, hiding behind our nuclear arsenal as third-rate Asiatic powers contemptuously defy us.
Breaking History’s Cycle
Man is a wondrous animal. He cannot circumvent Nature’s laws, but he can go a longway toward turning them to his advantage. With sufficient understanding and will he can make the best of them.
There is no natural law which says that a nation which has become rich and powerful must consequently become soft and decadent, any more than a man who has become wealthy and no longer needs to work for his living must become fat and lazy. It just usually turns out that way. In the case of nations it has never yet been otherwise.
But, just as an individual can remain fit through the exercise of sufficient self-discipline, so should a nation be able to do likewise. So should America.
Choosing National Goals
America should be able to remain economically and militarily strong and at the same time regain her former moral strength. It depends upon whether we have enough character left to choose the truly important things as our national goals, or whether we stick with the choices which have been made for us by the System and its molders of public opinion.
It depends upon whether we choose fitness as the pre-eminent national goal—fitness instead of debilitating comfort, fitness instead of transitory prosperity, fitness instead of false security, fitness instead of a delusory happiness.
What We Must Do
American can become fit again if we undertake the proper education of our children;if we forsake unnecessary civilian luxuries in order to maintain an unquestioned military superiority; if we put physical toughness ahead of self-indulgence; if we teach our fellow citizens to be self-reliant instead of dependent on government; andif we learn to discipline ourselves, putting the welfare of our racial community above all private interests.
Americans must understand that, contrary to the claims of the System’s educators, the proper education of our children does not require billions of dollars for shiny, glass-and-steel, air-conditioned school buildings, elaborately furnished with every luxury and frippery money can buy and offering courses in everything from African art to transcendental meditation.
Building Character
It requires instead a program for our young people which, beyond providing them with the rudiments of language and science needed to fill a productive role in society, builds character; a program of discipline, which is the way in which self-discipline is learned; a program aimed at developing in them a strong feeling of racial and cultural identity, through an intimate acquaintance with the achievements of their forebears, so that they understand that they are, above all else, White, and that they are the heirs to Western civilization, the most magnificent and profound cultural achievement on this globe; a program which also, instead of the “unisex” foolishness being pushed today, teaches our young men to be proud of their manhood and our young women to treasure their womanhood; a program which inculcates in them a sense of personal responsibility and of duty to their racial community; a program which toughens and trains their bodies as well as their minds and spirits; a program which uplifts them and directs their thoughts and aspirations toward the mission and the destiny of their people.
Guns or Butter?
Another choice which Americans must make is between guns and butter. We must come to understand that we can get along very well without electric can-openers, carving knives, toothbrushes, and pencil sharpeners; self-propelled lawn mowers and golf carts; power steering, power brakes, and power windows; automatic dish washers and self-cleaning ovens; but not without the strongest and the best-equipped armed forces in the world. A dollar spent for the national defense is a dollar better spent than for civilian luxuries.
Moreover, money spent for guns serves the national interest, whereas money spent on luxuries often harms that interest by undermining the physical health of the people. It may be pleasant, for example, to have more automobiles, elevators, and escalators per capita than any other country on earth, but it is far more important to have a citizenry which is healthy, trim, and physically hard.
Prepared to Slit Throats
Americans must also understand that being manly and tough does not mean being coarse, cruel, backward, or unrefined; that protecting our young people from the harsher realities of life serves neither them nor their racial community well in the long run; that it is better that they be prepared to slit throats without flinching, when the need arises, than that they be sheltered from danger and hardship and unpleasantness during their formative years.
Americans must understand that a resourceful and self-reliant citizenry is more important than an absolutely safe and secure citizenry and that, therefore, it is not the role of government to protect citizens from themselves, but only to protect the community; nor should government attempt to intrude excessively into the private affairs of individuals, nor to regulate their lives unnecessarily, but only to the extent demanded by national security and the social and racial health of the community.
Racial Interests Come First
Americans must also understand, on the other hand, that the freedom of the individual to do as he pleases requires certain limits, for the welfare of the nation; that there can be no unrestricted freedom to marry across racial lines or to have children without considerations of genetic soundness; that there can be no freedom to use private property to the detriment of the whole community, as, for example, the mass media are now being used; that there can be no freedom to indulge oneself in degeneracy which may contaminate the community, whether that degeneracy be homosexuality, drug addiction, or some other inexcusable vice.
Americans must come to understand which are the important things and which are not.
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Transcribed by Vanessa Neubauer from the book The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard, edited by Kevin Alfred Strom
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